John Cottle Showjumping

28/01/2025

📣 We’re Hiring: Groom Wanted – Auckland (Ardmore) 📣

Hey horse lovers! We’re looking for a dedicated and experienced groom to join our friendly team in Ardmore, Auckland.

What we offer:
• 📍 Location: Ardmore, Auckland (No live-in option – own accommodation required; living locally preferred)
• 🚗 Own transport to work is essential
• 🕐 Flexible schedule: 5 days a week, with 1 full day off and 2 half-days off by arrangement
• 💰 💰 Competitive salary
• 🐴 Bring your own horse along – we’ve got space for them too!
• 🏇 Enjoy our 55x40 arena with a top-quality Andrews Bowen fibre surface, a full set of show jumps, and a super friendly environment

Your role will include:
• Taking care of the horses with grooming, tacking up, and general farm duties (don’t worry, there’s hardly any box cleaning!)
• Lunging and, if you’re confident, hacking around the farm
• Joining us at shows – this one’s a must!

If you’re passionate about horses, reliable, and love being part of a great team, we’d love to hear from you!

📞 For more details, please PM us or call +64 21 2200275

27/01/2025

“Today, the School’s Riders and First Riding Masters, who have served a long apprenticeship in their profession, are such guardians of tradition. They started as pupils in the stables wearing a simple gray uniform. They then learned their trade, and a good seat in particular, on the so-called “Professors”, the old, tried stallions of the School, because learning to sit comes before learning to ride, and only from a secure, pliant, well-balanced seat comes a feeling for the correct aids. Those fine, invisible signs by which the rider communicates with a horse were in fact learned from well-ridden horses who would not dream of acting upon a false aid.

The seat – the rider’s weight which must at all times be fully balanced with the horse that bears it - is of fundamental importance because an incorrect seat will cause the rider’s weight to distort every movement of the horse.
The last word on this, the true basis of all riding, comes from the Director of the Spanish Riding School, Kurt Albrecht, in his book Dogmas of the Art of Riding (1981).
It sounds almost too simple: “The rider must seek to distribute his own center of gravity over the horse and maintain it there throughout every movement, whatever the gait he may require of the animal…”

However, it is no easy thing when the horse canters, gallops, turns, bends, and rising on its hind legs, or even makes a frightened sideways jump. In all circumstances, however, Albrecht says, “…security of the seat is not a matter of keeping a grip with the legs or holding the reins, but entirely of maintaining balance in the saddle.”
Quote courtesy of the book THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL: Four Centuries of Classic Horsemanship by Hans Handler

Photo of Oberbereiter Klaus Krzisch and Siglavy Mantua I courtesy of the book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dressage (Martin Diggle)

27/01/2025

Consistency and Practicing the basics are key 👌

Well worth a listen ⬇️

14/01/2025

09/01/2025

John, Paddy, and Millie hanging out today. 🌟

Over the past couple of weeks, Paddy Church has been breaking in Millie at John's and has been doing a fabulous job!

Millie is John and Jackie's filly by Chacco Silver, and she has already shown impressive jumping technique. 🤩

05/01/2025

ACT, Apartheid, Education, Equality before the Law, Labour Party, Law, Mana Party, Maori Party, Marxism, Nanny State, New Zealand History, Self reliance, Social Conditioning, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Treaty Separatism, Treaty of Waitangi, Uncategorized Principles of The Treaty Of Waitangi Bill. ...

01/01/2025

01/01/2025

Pictured here is John with Arturo 🌟

Joint Grand Prix winners of the 1983 World Cup Final in Vienna. 🥳

01/01/2025

25/12/2024

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

18/12/2024

Telegraph!

John bred and rode this admirable grey stallion.

Check this out ⬇️

🌟 2005 New Zealand Horse of the Year
🌟 2005 World Cup series winner
🌟 2004 National Showjumping Champion
🌟 2005 Grand Prix Showjumper of the Year
🌟 Winner of 13 Grand Prix’s from 15 starts in one season.

13/12/2024

11/12/2024

Why not move your horse to a property where you have access to a top coach teaching and mentoring you! 🤩

✔️50 acre property in Ardmore. Full livery, facility or agistment spots available.

✔️Andrew Bowen Fibre/ Sand arena, riding tracks, wash bay and yards.

✔️Relaxed and supportive environment! Horses also do well on the property 🥰🐎

✔️Top coach available on site! Who is invested in you!

A nice place to enjoy your horse 😍 And no, you don’t have to be a show jumper to graze here! 🙂😀

🐎 Full facility use $109.25 per week

🐴 Grazing/ agistment only $86.25 per week

Phone/ text John 021 220 0275

25/11/2024

Wanting someone to mentor and coach you? Someone who takes an interest in your learning journey? ⬇️

20/11/2024

This advice will NOT be popular with those who want it RIGHT NOW, but nevertheless, here goes---

If the goal is to become two things, a good rider and a good horseman/horsewoman, be willing to think in decades rather than in years.

That first decade, from whatever age you began, will take you only so far, and may even take you to the Olympics, but riding skill alone won’t give you all you need to know and be able to do. The next couple of decades will let three components, your physical skills, your control over your emotions and your knowledge, all intertwined to complement one another.

That’s why many of the best riders and trainers are in their 40s, 50s and in some cases in their 60s, even 70s. They didn’t get those tens of thousands of hours overnight.

There are ever so many riders and trainers who gave up too soon. They just needed to have hung in there another ten years, maybe twenty. Which sounds insane, but actually isn’t.

19/11/2024

When there is contact, the control with the hands can be precise.

Riding on “Contact” — by Vladimir Littauer

The contact between the rider’s hands and the horse’s is not established by the hand being moved to the rear. Just the reverse should take place; that is, the horse, moving forward with sufficient impulse stretches his neck and, due to the rider keeping a correct length of reins, the horse’s mouth feels the rider’s hands. Instead of the rider’s hands pulling back on the mouth, it is the mouth which gently pulls the rider’s hands forward. If the horse lacks natural impulse the rider’s legs must create it—this is the general rule.

Riding on contact can also be called “riding on the bit;” the latter expression means that the horse accepts the bit and moves forward boldly as if there were nothing in his mouth. I personally reserve the expression “on the bit” for a more energetic form of riding on contact, but this is a detail. The important thing is that the horse must accept the bit with the neck and head stretched forward.

When riding “on contact” the rider must follow with his hands and arms (through the air), the balancing gestures of his horse’s neck and head. It is obvious that when holding the reins by the buckle one doesn’t have to worry about these gestures, for the neck has enough room to move at will. But if after the contact is established the rider’s hands remain fixed then the horse will continually jerk himself against immobile hands. I don’t have to talk about jumping—everyone knows that in one way or another the horse’s neck then must be given freedom to act; but it is surprising how many riders neglect this point at a walk and particularly the gallop.
— Schooling Your Horse. Pg.17

Vladimir Littauer trained me practically my entire junior career, and continued to advise me for many years. A riding master and remarkable horseman, he was incredibly influential to my career and education. Follow the Forward Riding System and continue the lessons on equestriancoach.com. Specifically, you can learn more on this topic with my lesson “Developing Good Hands”:
https://equestriancoach.com/courses/developing-good-hands/
-Bernie Traurig